Interpol
Interpol is the
largest international police organisation in the world. It was set up
in 1923 to facilitate cross-border criminal police co-operation and
today has 181 member countries spread over five continents. It supports
and assists all organisations, authorities and services whose mission
is to prevent or combat international crime.
Interpol's General
Secretariat in Lyon, France, provides a fast and reliable communication
system that links police around the globe. Its priority activities concern
public safety and terrorism, criminal organisations, drug-related crimes,
financial and high-tech crime, trafficking in human beings, and fugitive
investigation support. But Interpol's staff, many of them police officers
seconded to Lyon from police forces around the world, also provide a
range of crucial services in other areas of criminal investigation and
crime prevention.
One of Interpol's
most important tasks is to place member countries on alert about people
who are being sought by police forces worldwide but it is a member country's
domestic police who request that they be placed on the Interpol wanted
list and it is domestic police who, for the most part, must track and
arrest them.
Interpol is the
sum of its constituent parts, but the General Secretariat in Lyon is
the essential co-ordinating mechanism that gives its members access
to international databases of criminal information as well as a global
view on specific crimes, patterns and trends.
Source:
Inrerpol.
